“Salut!: France Meets Philadelphia” is an informative, authoritative, and fun exploration of the French connection to the nearby City of Brotherly Love written by Temple University professors emeritus Lynn Miller (political science) and Therese Dolan (art history).

And while the city is close, the new Temple University Press book also shows how the French had a direct connection to regional culture, but more on that later.

Miller and Dolan quickly establish their argument. Through its first century, from the 1680s into the 1780s, Philadelphia was essentially a British colony chartered to William Penn. But the American Revolution pushed the leaders of both the city and the Revolution away from England to build alliances with the France.

“The diplomatic missions of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in Paris not only deepened their exposure to French Enlightenment ideas that would continue to shape the country’s ideas but also familiarized them with prominent artists and aesthetic traditions that would significantly impact late 18th century American art,” note the authors, who point out that many of the “iconic representations of our founding fathers” were done by French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon.

French financial support for the American Revolution and the active involvement of French figures like the charismatic Marquis de Lafayette additionally strengthen the bond with France and deepened the break from England.

The authors continue to note that while the French presence faded somewhat in the 19th century, “a number of individuals of French heritage contributed greatly to the intellectual and physical landscape of the city.” Included in that list is merchant and financier Stephen Girard; former aide-de-camp to Baron von Steuben and president of the American Philosophical Society Pierre Duponceau; master furniture maker (and great-great grandfather to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy) Michael Bouvier; and St. Augustine’s Church and the Cathedral-Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul architect Napoleon La­Brun, and others.

Meanwhile, France became the choice for young Philadelphia artists who would become world figures themselves: Thomas Eakins, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Mary Cassatt. And French architects Paul Philippe Cret and Jacques Greber’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway brought a Parisian-style boulevard to the heart of the city.

It now connects the Second Empire-designed Philadelphia City Hall to the beaux arts-styled Philadelphia Art Museum and is home to two major collections of French art: the Barnes Foundation and the Rodin Museum.

The book is filled with insights and engaging stories — including Joseph Bonaparte’s arrival in Philadelphia and the impact of his decision to settle in Bordentown.

As Miller and Dolan note, “First (and conceivably the most refined) among the new wave of exiles was Napoleon’s older brother, Joseph (1768-1844), who had been the emperor’s instrument before his own fall. Napoleon had made him, first, king of Naples, then king of Spain. The latter was a throne Joseph held reluctantly — three times he tried to abdicate — until June 1813, when he fled to France from Spain after losing a battle against the Duke of Wellington . . .”

Once Joseph learned of Napoleon’s surrender, he set sail to American and arrived in New York.

“He chose Philadelphia as the place where he would establish himself. He contacted Stephen Girard, who found a spacious house for the exiled king to rent at Ninth and Locust streets. Over the next several years, Girard as was invaluable banker and adviser, transporting much of Bonaparte’s art and household furnishings across the Atlantic on his own ships.

“Bonaparte began to make plans for purchasing an estate where he might settle, live lavishly, and contribute his savior faire to American culture and manners. Over the next year or two, he created a country manor from property he purchased north of Philadelphia on the east bank of the Delaware River in Bordentown, New Jersey. Point Breeze, as it was named, lay almost opposite William Penn’s old planation, Pennsbury Manor, on the Pennsylvania side of the river.

“Before he bought this property and began extensive renovations there, the Count de Suvilliers leased one of the grandest mansions in the Philadelphia area as his temporary home. Lansdowne, in what is now Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, had been built by William Penn’s grandson John in 1773 when he served as Pennsylvania’s governor. Before the American Revolution, Penn and his wife made the greatest Middle Georgian house in the colonies Philadelphia’s social center. Bonaparte continued the tradition, entertaining other wellborn Frenchmen in exile and prominent Americans.

“Joseph moved to Point Breeze in Bordentown, and then built a new and much larger home, landscaping the extensive grounds into what became the first major picturesque landscape in America. He almost single-handedly revitalized the local economy employing so many from the Bordentown area to work on his property. Soon the estate was known locally as ‘Bonaparte’s Park.’ There, as in Philadelphia, the count entertained lavishly. Among the friendships he made . . . these Francophiles were among the city’s intellectual elite, active in the newly established Athenaeum of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the professional life of the city. Several were also members of the prestigious American Philosophical Society, to which Bonaparte himself was elected in 1823. Meanwhile, the count added parcels to his New Jersey property over the years until it contained some 1,800 acres. Even while he made Point Breeze his principle estate, Bonaparte soon rented another Philadelphia mansion from Stephen Girard for those moments when his activities took him to the city.”

As frequently noted in stories regarding Joseph Bonaparte, his Point Breeze mansion caught fire one night in 1820 when Bonaparte was away. Then “upon his return he discovered that neighbors had rushed into the burning house to salvage what they could of his treasures. He was so touched that he sent a letter to newspapers across the country that revealed both his gratitude and wonder at their selflessness: ‘This event has proved to me how much the inhabitants of Bordentown appreciate the interest I have always felt for them; and shows that men in general are good.’ He rebuilt on a different site and on a scale that rivaled the White House in size and grandeur. He enlisted Girard to ship his furnishings and paintings.”

The writers say he then ordered new furniture from a young Philadelphia cabinet maker, Michael Bouvier (1792-1874), “who was already creating furniture for Girard’s home on Water Street. Bouvier, a native of Pont-Saint-Esprit near Avignon, had been a soldier in Napoleon’s army who fled to America from France” after Napoleon’s fall at Waterloo. Interestingly Bouvier’s great-great granddaughter would show off a work Bouvier did for Bonaparte and that she possessed when she was married to President John F. Kennedy and hosted a celebrated television tour of the White House and its collection.

According to the writers, “Bonaparte’s rebuilt mansion contained in addition to an 8,000 book library — the largest in America — a picture gallery, state dining room, and grand staircase. An artificial lake and causeway were constructed. Beside the lake, Joseph had a house built for his daughter, Zenide, and her husband, Joseph’s nephew, Charles Lucian Bonaparte, who would soon make a name for himself as an ornithologist. The young couple joined her father at Point Breeze a year after their 1822 marriage in Europe.”

Also living at Point Breeze was Bonaparte’s other daughter, Charlotte, who had studied art with Jacque Louis David and created a series of artworks used for a French book of “Views of the New World.”

Concluding the Bonaparte portion of the book, Miller and Dolan note that “as he gathered ever more of his art collections at Point Breeze, he was generous in inviting the public to view it. He also loaned many of his paintings regularly to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as the behest of its president, Joseph Hopkinson (the Bordentown artist, poet, musician, and Declaration of Independence signer). His sociability generally won out over stern social disapproval of his sexual dalliances.”

But more important, they say, the count’s ability to “fit into democratic norms” encouraged others in the “confidence in the nation’s rightness of the nation’s experiment in democracy” and concludes with Bonaparte’s statement, “Every day that I pass in the hospitable land of the United States proves more clearly to me the excellence of republican institutions for America. Keep them, as a precious gift from heaven.”

The book in its own way is a gift for regional art and city lovers.

“Salut!: France Meets Philadelphia” by Lynn Miller and Therese Dolan, 400 pages, $40, Temple University Press.

In November, 1944, United States President Franklin Roosevelt wrote to Office of Scientific Research and Development Director Vannevar Bush and asked four questions:

“First: What can be done, consistent with military security, and with the prior approval of the military authorities, to make known to the world as soon as possible the contributions which have been made during our war effort to scientific knowledge?

“Second: With particular reference to the war of science against disease, what can be done now to organize a program for continuing in the future the work which has been done in medicine and related sciences?

“Third: What can the Government do now and in the future to aid research activities by public and private organizations?

“(And) fourth: Can an effective program be proposed for discovering and developing scientific talent in American youth so that the continuing future of scientific research in this country may be assured on a level comparable to what has been done during the war?”

The reason, noted Roosevelt, was that “new frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged (World War II) we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life.”

The result was “Science, the Endless Frontier,” a July, 1945, report generally recognized — in the words of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — as a “prescient report” and “the guiding force for science and innovation in our country for decades (that) led to the development of the modern American research university, the National Science Foundation, and the intellectual architecture for science, engineering, and medical research and higher education in the United States.”

Princeton University Press is commemorating the report’s 75th anniversary by reissuing “Science, the Endless Frontier” along with a substantial essay by physicist and the former Congressman Rush Holt, who represented New Jersey’s 12th District and its 10 Mercer County municipalities from 1999 to 2015.

Reflecting on the original report’s successes and failures as well as recognizing the current tension between scientific research and public acceptance, Holt continues the discussion set fourth during another American era — one also of hope during an uncertain time.

Here is an excerpt from Holt’s essay, “The Science Bargain”:

Is science providing all it should, and are citizens receiving what they need from science?

Bush wrote that scientific progress was essential in the war against disease and could improve public health — yet a thriving scientific enterprise has not prevented millions of people from putting their children at calculable risk by failing to get vaccinations. Nor has the scientific progress been enough to prepare the United Stats to deal with a major virus pandemic in 2020. And it has not resulted in the United States undertaking the corrective measures required to stem costly climate change.

Evidently, our scientific enterprise is failing to give citizens some important things they need. These have not been failures of research — in immunology, virology, epidemiology, oceanography, or atmospheric science. Rather, they have been failures in the relationship between science and the public — something that the Bush report and subsequent debate largely overlooked.

From the modern perspective, in this regard Bush turns out to have been somewhat shortsighted. In the belief that scientific progress ultimately relies on the freedom of scientists to pursue basic research without thought of practical ends, he promoted a system that — while helping research to flourish — has also had the effect of distancing science from the public, and vice versa. His goal was to ensure not only rational, stable funding for scientists, but also the freedom to do their chosen work, unencumbered by societal direction or government planning.

While his competitor Kilgore had proposed an arrangement for all science funded by the government to be “a true servant of the people,” what has resulted can be seen to be more a servant of the scientists — a system to fund work that scientists themselves choose to do.

Indeed, many scientists are convinced that they would lose scientific creativity and effectiveness if they focused where the public might ask, rather than where their trained curiosity and established research avenues take them.

In my career as a research scientist and as a policymaker serving in Congress for 16 years I have observed that scientists fiercely guard their prerogative to choose the research agenda. Though they will make some allowances in order to secure funds, they generally believe that the fruits of their independent investigations will accrue best to the public without explicit public guidance. Research grants, usually awarded through scientific review, tend to be concentrated along elite, established patterns. The scientific community, as they have sought to avoid constraints that might come from government planning, have asserted independence in a way that results in the public regarding science as beyond their ability to judge or control, or sometimes even to understand — much less participate in.

Bush called for access to higher education and scientific training to be established through a scholarship program with the goal of “encouraging and enabling a larger number of young men and women of ability to take up science as a career.” This idea of select, trained researchers as the embodiment of science is reflected in the current practice of science and science education, as well as in public attitudes toward science. Researchers and their funders typically see their job as exclusively to do research. Even now most programs in science education still focus primarily on identifying and training future professional scientists and engineers, commonly called “filling the pipeline.” When legislators speak of our science teaching, they commonly allude to Americans’ comparative disadvantage to rivals in the number of scientists and engineers.

The result is that the public sees science not as a comprehensible approach toward understanding research available to them, but rather as what researchers do in their inaccessible labs. They see scientists as people who have mastered complicated ideas and instruments unfathomable to nonscientists. Products, cures, and other material benefits may emerge from research, after several unseen steps and the receiving public has little understanding of how they came about. They see little place for themselves in science, and although they welcome practical products that emerge from the scientific enterprise, they see little place for science and scientific thinking in their lives. This presents a problem when many of the world’s most urgent challenges, for example, pandemic or climate change, desperately require the public to engage with science and also to build an understanding and trust of scientists and scientific work. If members of the public think science is not intended for them, they turn away. They may not ask for verification of information given to them.

At the root of the issue is a limited view, traceable in part to Bush’s report, of what science is and how it contributes to society. In “Science, the Endless Frontier,” Bush identified science with research and development, and its benefit to society with its more or less tangible outputs: technologies, medicine, products.

But there is more to science than research, with its specialization and sometimes esoteric techniques, and the tangible outputs are only part of what the public should obtain from the science bargain and only part of what they should think of when they think of science. In its essence science is a way of asking questions that leads to the most reliable knowledge about how things are. This is it most essential contribution.

“Science, the Endless Frontier” by Vannevar Bush with a companion essay by Rush D. Holt, $12.95, 200 pages, Princeton University Press.